Functional illiteracy, youth delinquency and lack of technical innovation all point to the failures of state schooling, raising the question of why government should be involved in education at all. In this radical study Dr. James Tooley provides a damning critique of the justifications for state schooling and proposes practical policies to increase market provision of education.

Utility regulation in Britain has now entered a phase in which debate is no longer so much concerned with whether it is preferable to rival systems but with how to shape the'regulatory contract' in monopoly areas and, in potentially competitive areas, how to ensure rivalry.

In this challenging paper Dr Dick Atkinson asks why local education authorities are needed. Finding reasons lacking, he puts forward a proposal for all schools to be self-governing and thereby removed from the debilitating effects of politicised education.